What is a Microgreen?

What is a Microgreen?

Microgreens truly are miraculous, tiny, perfect representations of fresh vegetables, herbs and greens. They provide intense flavor in delicate bites – and studies are showing how their nutritional levels are off the charts. As another benefit, they add unexpected beauty to plates and texture to dishes. This post explores what a microgreen is, along with how, specifically, they are attractive, flavorful and nutritious.

What is a Microgreen?

When a plant is showing its first true leaf, that’s the definition of a microgreen. Often, this means the plant is one to two inches in length, but that isn’t consistently true because the actual sizes of microgreens vary from plant to plant, relative to the size of a full-grown version.

Here’s another way to look at the definition. When a seed-bearing plant first has an embryonic leaf, that’s known as a cotyledon leaf. At this point, the parsley looks like a basil leaf, which looks like a squash leaf, which looks like an arugula leaf. Suddenly, though, the parsley leaf is clearly a parsley leaf – and then that plant has officially moved into the microgreen stage. It will be tender, flavorful and chock full of nutrients. At Valley Microgreens in Ottawa, we harvest a percentage of our plants at this stage of growth, allowing others to continue to grow into the next stages: petite, ultra, baby and young – and sometimes beyond, to buds and blooms.